Syria’s Allejji gets Rio table tennis spot
Ennis-Hill fearful injury would prevent her from title defence
LAUSANNE, Switzerland, May 23, (Agencies): Heba Allejji will represent Syria at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro after being awarded a special place in the table tennis competition.
The ITTF announced the tripartite spots in the men’s and women’s competitions, giving 19-year-old, No. 667-ranked Allejji an Olympic debut.
She will be the first Syrian player to contest an Olympic table tennis tournament.
The tripartite places were available to athletes from national Olympic committees which had an average of fewer than eight athletes at the past two Olympics.
Despite the ongoing turmoil in wartorn Syria, the ITTF said Allejji has competed in international competitions including the 2016 Asian Olympic qualifiers and the World Tour Qatar Open.
Sandor Tarics, a water polo gold medalist for Hungary at the 1936 Berlin Games and the oldest living Olympic champion, has died. He was 102.
The Hungarian Olympic committee, citing information from his family, said Tarics passed away Saturday in San Francisco.
Tarics, an architect, emigrated to the United States in 1949 and became a university professor and also designed earthquake-resistant buildings.
The Hungarians won gold on goal difference over Germany in Berlin, the second of the team’s nine Olympic championships in water polo.
“Sport is an area where people love each other,” Tarics said last year in an interview published by the Hungarian Olympic committee. “Sports competition leads only to good things among nations.”
Tarics was born in Budapest on Sept 23, 1913. No information about survivors was available.
Britain’s Olympic and world heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis-Hill has said she feared that a recurring Achilles injury would prevent her from defending her title at the Rio Olympics.
The 30-year-old made her first competitive appearance of the season in the javelin event at a low-key meeting in Loughborough on Sunday, finishing last in the eight strong field.
Ennis-Hill recorded a best throw of 41.69 metres, well below her personal best of 48.33 metres, in her first event since winning her second world title in Beijing last August.
South Korea has given Olympic vault champion Yang Hak-seon some breathing room in his race to regain fitness after injury left his chances of making the team for the Rio Games hanging by a thread.
Yang ruptured his right Achilles in March during practice but was included in a preliminary list for the Rio Olympics announced on Sunday by the Korea Gymnastic Association (KGA).
The 23-year-old, who became South Korea’s first gold medal winner in gymnastics at the 2012 London Games, would be the country’s best hope of a medal in Rio if he was fit, KGA official
Han Chung-sik told Reuters on Monday.
Tony Azevedo is a speed boat in a pool full of aircraft carriers. And 16 years after he burst onto the international scene, he remains one of the world’s most dangerous scorers.
What comes next will have to wait. The captain of the US water polo team is going to his native Rio de Janeiro in search of one of the few lines missing from his resume: an Olympic gold medal.
“I’m pretty sure this is my last one,” Azevedo said. “It’s been a long, long road. You know I think of every one as my last, really. You go into it and say, ‘This is it, I’ll never have this opportunity again, take full advantage of it,’ and then reassess my life after.”
Denmark’s Viktor Axelsen believes he will go far at the Rio Olympics and is confident his fellow countrymen will also prove themselves after their historic Thomas Cup victory.
The Danes have momentum on their side following their maiden title at the world team championships, where Olympic powerhouse China crashed out in the quarter-finals.
In a sign of badminton’s shifting fortunes, Denmark became the first European team to win the men’s trophy while hosts China, who hold all five Olympic titles, suffered an early exit.
“I think in Denmark we have many strong players who can really be up there at the Olympics,” Axelsen told a press conference — much of which he conducted in fluent Mandarin, to the delight of the Chinese press corps.
“I have to believe I will go far in the Olympics because if you don’t believe in yourself then it won’t happen.”
In Kenya’s western town of Iten, known as the “Home of Champions” for drawing runners to train from around the world, athletes rise to pound the track and dirt roads at dawn.
Kenyan athletics stars such as marathon world record holder Dennis Kimetto and Olympic 800 metre champion David
Rudisha have slogged through their race preparations here, as well as Britain’s double Olympic and world champion Mo
Farah and a host of others. At 2,400 metres (7,900 feet), the altitude makes Iten an ideal location for established middle- and long-distance racers to build their endurance and stamina.
The town also draws less experienced athletes aspiring for glory in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in August, and disabled sportsmen and women aiming to compete in the Paralympics.
“I hope to be able to participate in the Rio Olympics this year,” said Thomas
Pkemei, a 27-year-old runner in one Iten camp who is getting ready for Kenya’s qualifying contests next month.
“The biggest obstacle is to keep on working to improve your ability and to overcome your injuries when they do happen,” said Pkemei, Kenyan champion for the 5,000 metres in 2007.
Some athletes choose to make the town their full-time residence, like Egla
Musop Jebichii, 28, a partially blind runner who will join the Kenyan team in the Paralympics. She lives with her husband and five-year-old son.
She previously ran in London’s 2012 Paralympics.
Others start small businesses to support themselves. Johana Kariankei lives in a training camp and sells souvenirs to foreign athletes there.
When not at his stall, he takes to the green open fields and dirt tracks around Iten to run. But better facilities would help, he said.
“We need good tracks to train in. This is the responsibility of the government to provide.”